Research methods

Research Methods

My stay at the Netherlands is reaching its end. Twelve weeks and I will be back home. For those last weeks I applied inter alia for a Research Methodology course. At the first lecture they told us that the main research methods are:

• Literature review.
• Experiment.
• Focus Group.
• Content analysis.
• Survey.
• Interview.

Literature review

As its name clearly says, the literature review method is based on review published materials around a topic. A basic way to describe this method would be: The literature review method is based on research through previous published researches and approaches to our Research Question (RQ).

Experiment

This method is based on manipulate variables amidst a real world scenario and measure the consequences . “If we do this, that happens”. This method uses to be really expensive.

Focus Group

We need to gather a group of people (experts or not) and let them to discuss about a topic. We can guide the discuss introducing topics or open questions.

Content Analysis

This method is focused on the form of any message or communication analyzed.

Survey

Get information by a questionnaire filled by a numerous group of people.

Interview

Is a face to face questionnaire. As is obvious it goes deeper than the survey.